I’ve always been kind of curious about dreams, hence for the past several years I’ve occasionally blogged the more memorable ones here for entertainment and posterity’s sake!
Last night I had a particularly interesting one, in that it was peppered with details that were both true and untrue – enough to lead me to wonder what exactly it is that makes up the content of our dreams … sometimes they’ll be completely fictional, sometimes an erie re-creation of past events, and every once in a while they’ll be like this one where fact and fiction seems to be sort of intertwined … and even more strangely enough, there were definitely a couple of moments where I knew that throughout my dream… 😕
I had returned to the auto parts warehouse where I used to work back in my hometown, and it was as if I was already working there again, but I also seemed ready to make my departure … again.
Walking into work one day, I found a note from the boss saying that I wasn’t supposed to keep personal items at work. It had been left in this upstairs second floor that the building had – which was true, however the part about getting in trouble was false.
The note had said that I could get my things – presumably some t-shirts and other clothes – from the manager who was holding them, but when I finally hunted him down, a bunch of my co-workers had gathered into sort of a dinner-type setting because they were all throwing this goodbye dinner for me.
This definitely didn’t happen, although the faces were all real!
What was particularly strange was that both old and newer employees alike were present – in reality, the warehouse got acquired by one of our competitors midway through my time there and some people left while other new faces joined – and yet here was a mix of both, though for some reason it sounded like somehow the original company had returned and managed to make a comeback.
At one point I found myself prompted to give a speech, and so I re-told a few anecdotes from working there through the years which everyone enjoyed, including a rousing story about the actual acquisition … which was booed, but then later applauded when I shared how the actual brand behind that company had still managed to survive.
Parts of this were actually true, in that the brand technically did survive and exists elsewhere today, though it no longer has nearly the presence in Michigan that it did before the acquisition. In fact, I even remember a few of my co-workers hoping that maybe someone else under the same brand would come in and “save us” from being acquired, but nothing ever came of that…
Eventually it was time for me to go, and I was packing up my things – which ended up being far more numerous than just a couple of stray t-shirts – though it was strange because around my desk were mementos from Florida, some rather personal from several girlfriends whom I certainly couldn’t have been dating all of at the same time! 😕
The references were real, and peculiar, and we’ll just leave it at that. 😛
As I was putting everything in bags, I started thinking about my future and about how instead of sticking around, maybe I should just hit the road and head back down to Tampa the very next day. Presumably there was some indecisiveness in my itinerary despite leaving my job up north, though the dream didn’t do much to elaborate.
I had vague recollections of a life that I once had down in Florida, but nothing definitive, and I think I thought that maybe once I got down to Tampa, more of those memories would come back to me.
This is a dream fragment that I have a lot, though admittedly not much as of recent – I’ll be back home, knowing that I used to live in Florida, but now I don’t … and I’m trying to put the pieces back together because I can’t quite remember how they fell apart and I had to go back home.
Mind you, none of this is factual, but I used to have nightmares about it for a long time – I think because moving was one of the most pivotal moments of my life.
The dream essentially faded away here, except for one other random fragment that was just too weird not to share because it involved somebody somehow flooding the warehouse – like an aquarium and we were all just swimming around underwater having a grand time until I finally had to come up for air because one of my children … it was unclear which one … was swimming with us, too, and he was having trouble and just needed to get flipped over!
While I was doing that, I had a pleasant chat with the manager who I’d worked with all of those years reflecting on everything that had transpired, so that was nice. 😉
And though I don’t recall a specific conversation that aligned with this one in the dream, I do remember leaving on a high note where he wished me luck and whatnot whereas it had taken many years for our working relationship to get to that point.
I guess it’s just both interesting and a bit odd to me to look at these subconscious, creative stories that happen inside of my own head and wonder how exactly they get put together in there … though now that I think about it, that’s how most of my creative work gets written, really. I either start with something outlandish and occasionally sprinkle in pieces of reality or maybe focus on a moment of truth, but then exaggerate it into a story that’s more funny or shocking or generally enjoyable than the original ever could’ve been on its own.
I’m not sure what the stats look like now, but I know that when I moved to Florida back in 2003 something like 700 people moved to the Sunshine State every single day. And as I sat there in my stately motel room, eating pizza and trying to write freelance articles for the newspaper that was now the polar opposite of the new world right outside of my motel door, it kind of blew my mind to think that in one form or another, there were another 699 people around the state – many of them right there with me in Tampa – who were going through the same thing!
So while the story itself wasn’t particularly unique, there were certainly bits and pieces that when blown a little out of proportion like any good humorist does make it a fun story to reflect back on, and so maybe that along with its significance in my life is why it seems to keep bubbling up time and time again while I’m trying to get a good night’s sleep, too.
And it makes me wonder if other creative folks find themselves dreaming like this as well. My wife, for example, says that she almost never dreams, which I’m about 95% sure isn’t just because she’s up every 2.5 hours to breastfeed the twins yet again! Despite all having the same general biological stuff on the inside, it tends to function a little differently for each of us … beyond that, though, there’s a reason why I’m a writer and not a biologist!
I did perform Dream On by Aerosmith in the talent show during my junior year of high school, so maybe that has something to do with it??? 😉